After skyrocketing last week, Solana’s unofficial GameStop meme coin has, perhaps unsurprisingly, since plummeted—shedding more than 70% of its value since early last week. But meme coins are historically volatile and this one is no exception, mounting a surprise comeback over the last hours.
At writing, the coin is trading at just under $0.004, according to CoinGecko. But even with its sizable collapse since setting an all-time high price of $0.135 on February 7, the Solana token has more than doubled in price in the last 18 hours alone after dropping below $0.002.
Launched in late January, the GME token lived longer than most viral meme coins, which tend to pop up in relation to a major piece of news, soar briefly, and then crater to zero within hours or days.
GME appears to have no formal affiliation with video game retailer GameStop, the company that became an internet sensation after its struggling stock (ticker: GME) was hijacked by Redditors and short squeezed in 2021.
Solana Outage Can't Stop GameStop Tribute Meme Coin From Skyrocketing
A GameStop-inspired Solana meme coin launched in late January has followed the rollercoaster-like trajectory of the video game retailer’s own meme stock in recent years, surging last week before falling just as quickly. It’s back on the rise now—and even Tuesday’s Solana network outage couldn’t slow its roll. GME, the unofficial GameStop-themed meme coin, has jumped 91% over the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinGecko, at a current price above $0.0096. The token briefly popped above $0.0...
GameStop later launched a crypto wallet, which was discontinued last fall, and an NFT platform, which shut down earlier this month. The firm did not reply to Decrypt’s earlier request for comment regarding the meme coin.
The GME meme coin has seen roughly $3.8 million worth of trading volume in the last 24 hours, even as prices plummet. The token currently sits at a market capitalization of $26.3 million, according to data from GeckoTerminal.
The Rise and Fall of GameStop's NFT Marketplace
GameStop has given up on NFTs. Less than three years after first hinting at its interest in NFTs, GameStop has ditched its NFT marketplace. As announced in January, the platform is no longer functional for buying and selling assets as of February 2, though it is still viewable online. The game retailer, which began as a U.S.-based brick-and-mortar operation back in 1984, has recently struggled to maintain a profitable business. GameStop was profitable for the first time in years in late 2022, bu...
While that figure pales in comparison to the values of years-old meme coins like Dogecoin ($12.19 billion) and Shiba Inu ($5.83 billion), it is nonetheless substantial in comparison to the slew of meme coins that pop up daily, rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of trading value, and then collapse to miniscule market capitalizations within the day.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
